Colum McCann's TransAtlantic

Colum McCann won the National Book Award in 2009 for Let the Great World Spin. His latest novel, TransAtlantic, is an expansive story that blends fact and fiction to charting several Transatlantic journeys, from Frederick Douglass's in 1845, up to the many crossings of Senator George Mitchell as he helped negotiate the Northern Ireland peace process. We talked with McCann about the book, what inspired him to write it, and the two novels he has sitting in a drawer